


A Cadenza, Stumbling

by wanderNavi



Series: tiny ships in the shadow of the behemoth [3]
Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Exalt Lissa, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-21
Updated: 2019-12-21
Packaged: 2021-02-25 20:55:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21891772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wanderNavi/pseuds/wanderNavi
Summary: Lucina’s all of eleven years old and Cynthia even younger, so there’s no way Lissa is allowing either of her brother’s children to ascend to the shackles of the throne yet.
Series: tiny ships in the shadow of the behemoth [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1236185
Kudos: 11





	A Cadenza, Stumbling

**Author's Note:**

> A perspective from the world before in the Behemoth series. 
> 
> Written to the soundtrack of Keaton Henson.

Lucina’s all of eleven years old and Cynthia even younger, so there’s no way Lissa is allowing either of her brother’s children ascend to the shackles of the throne yet. With tiny eyes and fleeting memories, Lissa watched her sister’s coronation at an even younger age, but she doesn’t remember any of it. Instead, her first memories of her sister are lit by the library’s fireplaces, her knees digging into the course fur of a rug laid out over cold stone floors, head resting on her sister’s leg while she sat in a chair, thin finger keeping pace on its trek across and down a page while she read aloud in a tired brook’s murmur. Gold edged each page, shining in orange flickers, and Lissa watched the dancing colors more than the story’s words.

“Time for bed,” her sister said eventually and Lissa shook her head, no, for then she wouldn’t see her sister for all the next day, for longer, for forever. Between lessons and trailing after her brother, Lissa caught snatches of her sister standing too far away, a forest of legs and bodies between them, of ministers and advisors and religious leaders and guild masters standing between her and her sister. Lissa shook her head no, and even then, no older than fifteen herself, Emmeryn smiled patiently – tiredly – and said, “Bed, Lissa. You need to sleep. I’ll tuck you in.”

Emmeryn had more minutes to spend on the army’s men who hounded her for their father’s debts and more minutes to spend on the diplomates who hounded her for the kingdom’s trade and more minutes to spend on the magistrates who hounded her for the crown’s laws than minutes she had for her remaining family; she always belonged more to Ylisse than to Lissa and Chrom. Even now, years later, Lissa doesn’t fully understand what it meant for Emmeryn to accept the throne and sit between the crown’s hammer and anvil, bent to bear the full weight of her brand, so soon in the wake of their parents’ deaths and the sudden halt to the wars.

When Lissa was ten and Chrom was stretching into the lanky limbs of fourteen, he pulled her aside one syrup sweet spring afternoon and asked her among the neatly trimmed topiaries, “Do you understand what Emmeryn has done for this country?”

Lissa tugged at the hem of her skirt and scuffed a heel against the green grass and said, “No? I don’t think, not really? She’s a great Exalt, isn’t she?”

And Chrom hummed, uneven, “Yes. She is.”

Five years later, Falchion in hand, he took the mantle of his brand with a roar, and two and half years after that –

The Exalt line passes through blood, not marriage, so Lissa’s put on the throne.

* * *

Through sheer proximity, Lissa picks up the odds and ends of being Exalt from Emmeryn and Chrom, but not nearly enough. Emmeryn ruled over a land in peace and of returning prosperity. The Guilds and coffeehouses, minor nobles and trade ports that made the backbone of her Ylisse are in shambles. The army that made Chrom’s Ylisse are a likewise mess. Never mind that Lissa could never direct the army in his stead in the first place, with no officer experience and always kept to the rear plucking the wounded away from the battlefield. She didn’t have Chrom’s charisma that could extend a hand in the midst of a battle’s flying chaos, and somehow know in the microscopic glint in a foe’s eye and by the stretch of their shoulders that this one would take his hand. Worst of all, she didn’t have Robin at her side.

Since that terrible day when Frederick came back with his hands clamped tight over Falchion in its sheath and placed her brother’s sword in her hands with a weight and pale silence that made it all the heavier, before turning back to retrieve one body of the two she expected – ever since that terrible day, Frederick never breathes a word about what he suspects happened. He retreats to his quarters each night and Lissa doesn’t ask him how he’s able to sleep in his now colder bed. Lissa herself refuses to change her bedchambers to the more central and better fortified suite reserved for the Exalt, with all its heightened decorations and plagues of memories eating at her will like a cloud of locusts no sword or magic could deter.

She lies in her bed and stares into the shadows cast on her ceiling. This ceiling which nursed her through her mother’s death and enveloped her through her father’s death and mourned with her through her sister’s death and now stands vigil over her brother’s death. Lissa’s the last one standing against a rising tide battering their levies and soon –

And soon she will crumble, but not yet.

But not yet, because after the funerals, after Frederick coaches her through how to read and take in the reports, how to decipher his wife’s notes and maps, how to evaluate the troops, there’s still work to do. He’ll teach Lucina the best he can with a rotating gaggle of instructors in the form of Vaike and Sully and Flavia dropping by. She’ll listen to Lukas’ briefings and learn to steel her face when he haltingly tells her: “There’ve been sightings of this Grima’s vessel among the remaining leadership of the Grimleal. A woman with light purple hair, about a meter and three-quarters tall, exceptional skill with the sword and with tomes. Delphi said she looked a lot like –”

“You knew,” Lissa realizes and accuses Frederick over dinner a week later, too wired by too many pots of tea to moderate her tone. She’s always been rasher than her siblings with these personal matters, “You knew already. Then why haven’t you said anything?”

His hands and shoulders are still, and his eyes meet hers and he says in the too small space between them, across the oak expanse of the table set between their chairs, “I knew. I hoped differently. Given her past, we had suspicions, but we both hoped it wouldn’t –” He switches tracks, “I promised her I’d be the one to strike her down. In case.”

And Lissa’s hands are too small to hit him, too small to carry this weight for long, but her voice is large enough to scream, “How can you say that so calmly? How can you just sit there and tell me, and tell me that my brother’s best friend was forced to kill him and is now forced to do _who the hell_ knows what for her enemies and that you _promised you’d kill your own wife?_ How?”

* * *

She’s nine and haggard from pointed questions and whispered rumors. Driven to a teary fit, Lissa barricades herself in her room and from the hallway, a knock sounds.

On the other side of the door, high pitched and warbling with tears, Lissa screams, “Go away!”

Emmeryn knocks on her bedroom door again.

“Go away, go away, _go away!_ ”

“Lissa, let me in.”

“No!”

Emmeryn sighs and standing in the hallway, waits her out. After several minutes of more sniffling tears, Lissa cracks open the door, a hand wiping at her flushed cheeks under her red eyes. Tears still flowing, she tries again, “Go away.”

“Lissa,” Emmeryn says, voice soft and hurting for her, this child she helped raise while barely still a child herself. “Oh, Lissa, dear. What happened?”

Lissa can feel how her nose scrunches, something red and messy and ugly, and blond hair a mess flying around her head, she shakes her head and tries to shut the door. Her sister’s hands stop her efforts, though she tries again and again with each, “Lissa, please.” Giving up and not wanting to harm her sister’s hands, Lissa hurls herself onto her bed and buries her snotty face into her pillows, refusing to look at the wounded expression on Emmeryn who can begin to guess what brought this on.

A hand on her shoulders, petting her hair and pulling the loose curls away from her face and open mouth. From somewhere, Emmeryn swipes a clean cloth and coaxes Lissa into sitting up so she can wipe away at the distress on her face. In the bruising quiet of Lissa’s sobs leaving behind hiccups, Emmeryn asks, “Do you want to talk about it?”

Against the green folds of her robes, Lissa asks, “I’m your sister, right?”

“Of course you are.”

“I’m really, _really_ your sister, right?”

“Yes, you are, Lissa. You’re my sister and you’re Chrom’s sister. You’re really, really our sister. What’s wrong?”

“Some of the, some of the people,” a hiccup interrupts her, “they keep saying that I’m _not_ your sister. That I should, that I shouldn’t live with you, that I shouldn’t.” She presses her face into Emmeryn’s embrace and shakes her head.

Above her and her hands clutching at Emmeryn’s clothes, she hears a sigh and soft hums, “This is about your brand, isn’t it?”

“Mngh,” Lissa neither confirms nor denies.

“Lissa,” Emmeryn says, “look at me.”

She tilts her head back enough to peek into her sister’s eyes, who says, “Those people saying those things, they’re wrong. You’re absolutely my sister and I’ll never send you away. Just because you don’t have the Exalt’s brand doesn’t mean you aren’t my sister or my family. Those people care about things that don’t matter at the end of the day and that’s why they’re mean. I’ll set them right.”

“What are the things that they care about?” Lissa asks while realizing a growing need for a glass of water.

Emmeryn runs a hand over her face in silence, brushing the hair away from the tear stains. She weighs her words in a way Chrom and Lissa don’t and Lissa doesn’t understand what she’s thinking about, not yet, not until years and years later while standing by a window and looking out at a land that should never have been hers to rule. Finally, Emmeryn says, “When I’m no longer Exalt –” Lissa makes a noise of protest, Emmeryn’s always been the Exalt and she always will, “—When I’m no longer Exalt – it’ll happen one day Lissa, far, far away – someone from our family will be the next Exalt. Only someone from our family can be Exalt and people want to be very, very sure, you see?”

“Oh,” Lissa makes a sound in half understanding.

“Mhmm. But Lissa, don’t worry. Naga forbid anything ever happen to me, but unless I have children, next in line is Chrom. We’ll both make sure you’ll never have to be Exalt, understand?” A lighter tease, “It’s very boring compared to your adventures.”

Lissa, in all her nine-year-old wisdom, sticks out her tongue and says, “Yuck.”

Delighted, Emmeryn laughs and says, “I promise, Lissa, okay? I promise.”

* * *

Lissa’s not supposed to be here, in the shadows surrounding the training grounds, watching Frederick wield the blame he holds for himself and sharpen it into a blade to train her niece with. Falchion’s still too large in Lucina’s hands, but it cuts for her and with their troops steadily falling back, delaying the inevitable as much as they can, that’s the most they can ask for right now. At Frederick’s wretched request, Lissa bites her lips and keeps her throat closed while Lucina asks, fueled with a vengeance and a need to prove herself without understanding the full consequences, “The person who killed my father. Who were they?”

Lissa keeps silent as Frederick says, “I’ve told you as much as I’m willing already. They were your father’s best friend. And I’ll be the one to deal with them.”

Full of teenager doubt, Lucina asks, “Really?”

“Enough distraction,” Frederick answers instead. “The form, again.”

She stays for the following hour. Lets her scarce free time run free from her hands to watch Frederick cling to his remaining promises with his fingertips. Watch her niece grow up too quickly as her sister had.

When the hour runs out and after he’s dismissed Lucina for the day, Frederick finds her there, still standing as she was when she first accidentally caught sight of Falchion’s reflected shine. She doesn’t think about how Grima razed a series of towns to the ground at their smoldering outskirts or how a woman with purple robes sliced her way unaided through a platoon of their men. She doesn’t think about the crackling magic corrupting their rivers and staining their forests.

Lissa loves the Robin in her memories best for her laugh and smile that pulled her mouth to the side and the smooth confidence of her genius nurtured by years of travel and hours of books. She’d been a friend Lissa always desperately wanted, an older sister in a different mold from Emmeryn, who Lissa could chat and gossip with and sit spellbound listening to the riotous tales of her adventures growing up, scampering from one continent to another. With a sly, offhand smirk in secret from her brother and Frederick, Robin taught Lissa all the best curses and insults she picked up from Chon’sin and Valm and Ferox and further west and further south. Maribelle found them once, howling with laughter at each of their terrible accents.

When a chill set in as day turned to night, Robin sat snug next to Frederick, scrolls and maps overflowing over their laps and Lissa would watch from the other side of the fire while they made their plans for the next day or Robin told Frederick about a time she stowed away on a merchant ship or he told her about Chrom’s most embarrassing secrets. Lissa found that they looked best flanking Chrom as his most trusted men and he in turn looked best with their unwavering support behind him.

“She’s a natural,” Frederick tells her, lit ablaze by the setting sun. “A few more years, and she’ll be a force few can defeat.”

“That’s good to hear,” Lissa says instead of _she’s still so young_ or _I can’t bear to watch her, it hurts too much still_ or _how the hells can you still say you’ll be the one to take care of Robin, she’ll crush you before you could even lift your sword, damn it, Frederick, I can't lose you too._

Lissa says, “Come with me, I want your opinion on the northern front.”

And, “Very well, my lord,” Frederick says.


End file.
